The title says it all folks! The Ottawa Extra Life Guild is doing a second 24 hour Extra Life event this year! I wanted to talk about this sooner but it took a while to get things organised, plus I got sick for a week which derailed that for a bit. Don’t know what Extra Life is? Check here and get yourself some knowledge!

If you’re from Ottawa, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the CHEO Telethon, a massive local tradition where CTV Ottawa partners with CHEO to do on-air fundraising. The telethon has been running for years and has raised millions for CHEO and is a huge event in this city.

In recognition of the huge and growing impact Extra Life has for the hospital. CHEO has invited our guild to do a second 24 hour game day on the set of the telethon this year! Approximately 20-25 of us will have our own area on set where we’ll have several people streaming from PCs, a bunch of console players, a board gaming area and more. We’re also going to be doing a cheque presentation during the show for the almost $80,000 Extra Life raised for CHEO last year, as well as various short interview segments during the run of the broadcast. I’ll be doing at least one of these.

This event’s going to be a fair bit different from normal Extra Life in that the telethon runs from 7pm to 7pm, so it starts late and ends late. This is going to be much harder to calibrate my internal clock for and will probably be a tougher 24 hours but we’ve got a great group of people that will help make it easier.

As usual, I’ll be streaming the whole thing, both on YouTube at 1080p60 and on Twitch at 720p30. I normally have a theme with my Extra Life events but this one is simple: Attack the backlog. I’ve been so busy the last few months that I have a bunch of new releases that I’ve either barely touched or not touched at all. The Division, Fallout 4, XCOM 2, Total Warhammer, HITMAN, Dark Souls III, Overwatch, Uncharted 4, the list goes on and on. I plan to just play as much of these new games as I can and make as big a dent in the backlog as I can. I’m also hoping to be able to hook up a second headset so that some of the people on set with me can jump into the occasional local co-op game.

Most of these titles have online components as well and I want to play with you guys! Extra Life is always more fun when you can play with other people. Whether you just want to hang out and yak in the chat or coordinate some multiplayer action, it’s all good! I’ve also got Killing Floor 2 and Warhammer End Times: Vermintide which I haven’t played nearly enough of either. Let’s play stuff together and have fun!

I don’t have my stretch goals for this year’s campaign figured out yet but I’m still actively raising money already so if you have a few bucks you can chip in to help out sick kids, you can donate right here as always. 100% of your donation goes to CHEO and is tax deductible. The more we raise, the more stretch goals I’ll be committed to when I figure them out so donate early, donate often.

I hope a bunch of you are able to tune in and play stuff with me next weekend. This event is a huge deal for the Ottawa Extra Life Guild and we are so excited to make it a massive success so that CHEO will hopefully make our telethon presence a yearly thing going forward. Even if you can’t watch or donate, please just tell even one other person about it. The more people we get watching, the more awareness we raise and the bigger an impact we have and after all, that’s why we all do this.

Thanks for your support and I’ll see you next weekend on Twitch and YouTube!